Consider families in death debate

Published 5:10 pm, Thursday, September 23, 2010

To evaluate our death penalty without careful attention to the ways in which the system affects murder victims' families is a harmful mistake. The question before us cannot be whether we should keep the death penalty for the most heinous crimes. The question is does keeping the death penalty cause further harm to murder victims' family members.

In 1993, I lost my sister-in-law in a brutal rape and murder. As a murder victim's family member, I yearn for a society that puts more emphasis on helping survivors and less emphasis on what to do with the killer.

Don't get me wrong: I feel no sympathy for murderers and believe they have sacrificed the right to live freely in our society for their remaining days. It's just that the death penalty distorts what is really important and does so to the detriment of survivors.

The death penalty in our state offers a false promise to victims' family members and delivers decades of additional pain. In nearly the last half-century, Connecticut has executed only one person and he voluntarily gave up his appeals. It still took 18 years after his conviction to execute him. Others have been on death row for over two decades.

While no death sentences are actually carried out, families suffer through years of appeals where the details of the crime are replayed in the press over and over again. The defendant becomes a celebrity while victims are forgotten. (The press does not cover the shorter appeal process for those who receive life without parole.)

This broken and inefficient system, which rarely carries out its goals, actually costs more than life without release. It's not just the money. If the state and society want to spend 20 years and millions of dollars addressing a crime, shouldn't that time and energy be spent helping the survivors?

The current services available for murder victims' family members are insufficient. In these tight economic times, we should be ashamed to spend extra money on the mere idea of an execution.

The death penalty should not be kept just for the most heinous crimes. To every murder victim's family member, his or her crime is the most heinous. How can we say otherwise? I wish we would repeal the death penalty and put our focus back where it belongs: helping survivors move forward with their lives.